The first time I saw this trailer below, I fell in love with this game. The graphics cute and the gameplay is pretty unique (that's what I saw from the trailer) to make me excited waiting for the game. You can check the trailer below and if the trailer alone isn't convincing enough, you can continue reading my review for this game. However, if the trailer can convince you, use the link below to support me and my work at Modern Jamming.

So the developer for this game is called Kurechii. Kurechii is a Malayasian-based game studio that not just some mere indie-developer. They are the creator of The King's League: Odyssey, it’s amazing and if you’ve got time please try this game. I've spent hours to play this game and man I just can't stop until the game finally ends; and I think the streak will continue with Kurechii's latest game, Tiny Guardians.

Summon the Guardians

The story is revolving around the journey of a summoners called Lunalie. Lunalie is searching for her aunt who went MIA. Well, as we all might have guessed, Lunalie’s journey will be tough as she traverses the Caspid Plains and Fractured Forest, onto the ashen soil of Helix and a mysterious circus. There she will be welcomed by waves of wolves, cowboys, eerie creatures, cute fairies, and even some weird circus.

Lunalie won't be left alone though. As a powerful summoners, she can summons up to six guardians from total twelve guardians available, to fight alongside her. Each guardian will have their own unique ability and strength, as well as their own weakness. They also have four upgradable levels that can significantly help them guarding Lunalie. These twelve guardians are divided into four types, Warrior, Range, Stealth, and Magic.

To call these guardians, Lunalie needs her summoning circle available. In every level, Lunalie at first will only able to summon three guardians. But, after the slots is full, there will be option available to open up more summoning slots in her circle. You can open up three more summoning slots. So, in total you will have six guardians.

It's not TD, it's Lunalie Defense

During Lunalie's journey, there will be various kind of enemies coming after her. There are over 40 diverse enemy types that have different strategy depending on what type of enemy you're currently facing. By strategy, I mean you should assign the right type of guardian in order to effectively hit the enemy.

For example: if you're fighting against flying enemies, it's better to use range guardians; or if you're fighting against bunch of enemies, it's better to use mage as they can hit multiple enemies in one shot. These examples show the depth of each level design from Tiny Guardians developer.

Tiny Guardians’ Level Design

There are three difficulties available in Tiny Guardians (easy, normal, and hard, if you're asking) for each level. There is also Challenge Mode that comes similar with the ordinary map, but with some guardians limitation, like you can't use range or warrior guardians. Each level also reward you with stars. There are up to three stars you can achieve in each level.

With these stars, you can upgrade the guardians ability. These upgrades will help the guardians to fight in a more difficult level. Moreover, you can reset the upgrade and choose it depending on your current challenge.

There are also some extra guardians available by completing quest. These quests can have lots of variation. Sometimes, it will just telling you to continue playing the story mode, but in another time, it tells you to finish the challenge mode or finish the level with higher difficulty. After you complete these quests, you will be rewarded with coins. These coins are the currency to unlock special guardians.

Salute to you Kurechii!

Although the graphic somewhat feels like a Kingdom Rush game, I personally think that Tiny Guardians still deserves all the praise of the product regarding the characters design. All of them has their own uniqueness in character, each with their own personality and distinguish one from another.

Tiny Guardians’ IAP policy is also a brilliant move for me. Like what I've stated above, upon clearing quests, you can unlock some special guardians. There are total eight guardians that can be purchased separately from the original content. However, not all of them are IAP guardians. Four of them are the special guardians that's unlock-able by completing quest. The other four can be purchased with real money.

Although special guardians are game changer, the other four are only re-skin versions of the original. So the IAP is just a method to keep you playing and if you want to support the developer, you can support them by purchasing the re-skin versions. There are no intention for the developers to get money from the players and I really appreciate that move from them.

Tips and Tricks

Kurechii has been kind enough to give some general guideline if you have some basic questions about Tiny Guardians. As for me, I'll try to uncover some other things.

How to Get 3 Stars in Tiny Guardians

The tricks in getting 3 stars in Tiny Guardians is simple, yet very hard to do if your guardians aren't strong enough. The tricks is that you have to trigger the enemy waves earlier. As the picture in the left shows (picture courtesy to Kurechii), you need to trigger the waves as soon as they arrive. The sooner you tap, the more points you can get.

The other way to get as many point as possible is to minimize damage dealt to Lunalie. Whenever Lunalie gets hurt, your point will be reduced. That's why if you're aiming for 3 stars, make sure no enemies are able to lay hand on your precious summoners.

How to Beat the Boss

As Kurechii has stated in their general guideline, there are four bosses available for you to beat. Now if you're stucked even at the first boss, the Stinger, I have some general suggestions for you.

Generally speaking, the first way to beat the boss is to reduce its level difficulty. Do not follow any request from the quest. You can always finish the request later on, after you've collected enough stars and have upgraded your guardians.

The second way is to understand the pattern of the Boss attack. In all four bosses, I noticed that before they did attack, they always have this some sort of red circle or red target against your guardians. If any of your guardians are targeted with this red weird thing, quickly move your guardians away from the boss. If the one that's being targeted is Lunalie, then quickly prepare your healing skills and target it to Lunalie.

Now if you're having fun and ready to take to next step, make sure you have unlock at least one special guardian. Unlike the ordinary guardians, special guardians can be summoned in any level, that means even in the first boss level, you can summon them as well. Also make sure that you know your guardian skills and create a balance team, which I will try to share in the next section.

Characters and Skills

As you know, each guardian has their own abilities that make they can be either useful or not. So for you who's asking, "why bring berserker? they're not that useful and a little bit overpriced", I will give you tips for each guardian types.

First of all, you don't need to open up all the summoning slots. Most of the time, I only use maximum five guardians and with only that I can get three stars in Hard level. Second, you can't use too many guardians that share the same type. You must balance the guardians type so it can respond well to various enemy types. The best team is to have one melee offensive type, one melee defensive type, one or two range, and a healer.

Warrior

Now let's get into Warrior. Warrior distinguished themselves into two types. The first type shared by Knight and Paladin as the defensive type and the second type is for Berserker as the offensive type.

My best Warrior's option for defensive is the Paladin. Paladin is useful for taking damage from multiple enemies. It's even more useful with his high armor and his Aegis Gleam that can heal himself. If you have enough coins, I'd suggest you to unlock Paladin first compared to Sentinel

However, if you haven't unlocked Paladin, I'd suggest you to use Knight. Although Knight isn't that tough when defending, compared to Paladin, Knight has Honed Strike that can deals area damage and stun target. This skills quite useful when fighting against tougher enemy.

The last Warrior and also my favorite is Berserker. Berserker is a Warrior you should choose when you need more damage. However, you should note that when you summon Berserker, you should have enough mana to upgrade Berserker's level right away. This upgrade not just increase the damage and its HP but also enables the Spin & Bin that can damage multiple enemies.

Range

Next one is Range type. All the Range type can be categorized as offensive type. I personally don't really use range, at most I only use one range in my team. The reason is that usually, I only use one offensive range guardian in my team.

However, if at the end you're deciding to use Range guardians, let me tell you that Range has three guardians, Archer, Hunter, and Sentinel. The worst one of those three is Archer. The best one is of course Sentinel. When I've finally unlocked Sentinel, I'm starting to use range guardian in my team. She has the highest damage compared to the other, she also has the greatest range. Basically, if you're thinking to use range guardian, make sure you unlock Sentinel.

Mage

Magic guardian is my go to guardian for offensive type range. There are also three guardians available in this type, Magician, Cleric, and Wizard. Before unlocking Wizard, I always use both Magician and Cleric in my main team. Wizard and Magician are similar in terms of the ability. Both of them are able to hit multiple enemies, their skills also do damage to multiple enemies too. The only different is if Magician's skill will slow the enemies, Wizard's is now slowing, but dealing bigger damage.

As for Cleric, she's a must bring guardian for any team. Her healing ability is the main factor why you should bring her in your team. Not only able to heal, she can deal some damage too although it's not too big. The only thing that you should note is that Cleric is not quick enough, she also doesn't have that many HP nor high armor. So if some boss target her, make sure you move her away.

Stealth

The last type of guardian is the Stealth. Stealth has three types, Rogue, Assassin, and Dancer. Stealth guardian is mostly brought by everyone since they're all rounder guardians. They can hit melee as well as range, they also quick foot so they can quickly run to guard the Lunalie. Moreover they have critical ability, so although their base damage is not that big, in the late wave, Stealth guardian can deal pretty big damage to the enemies.

Among the stealth guardians, my favorite is also Dancer. Dancer has the ability to buff all the allies attack, defense, even their movement speed. On top of that, Dancer can deal a pretty big damage for a stealth guardian.

For playing with Stealth guardian, my tips is to not summon them in the early wave. To play with a stealth guardian, you need to have a defensive type guardian summoned before. Stealth is also pretty similar to Berserker. So if you already choose to use Berserker, don't use stealth guardian anymore.

Conclusion

Tiny Guardians is an amazing strategy game. Once again, it's not your ordinary tower defense game. It's far more amazing than just tower defense. With all that cute graphics and amazing gameplay, I don't have enough reason why you aren't downloading the game.